ann
Trainee
Posts: 26 
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Post by ann on Jan 18, 2015 15:08:05 GMT -5
Have just ordered these off eBay as being of mining interest. There are a couple of suggestions as to exactly what they are! The box refers to them as "capills" and were being sold as mining boot toecaps. However a suggestion has been made that they were to be attached to pit ponies hooves (nailed on along the line of the shoe at the front) to offer extra protection to the hoof and prevent the pony catching a shoe on the rails and ripping them off.
Does anyone know for sure either way please?! Attachments:
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Post by tygwyn on Jan 18, 2015 16:18:35 GMT -5
Ann,
You can rule out the suggestion of protecting Ponies hooves,
1. They are the wrong shape for a hoof,
2.Considering the make-up of a Ponies hoof,if they were nailed on through the holes shown,one would end up with a lame Pony.
Shoes are usually ripped off underground by the heels of the shoe catching.
Not seen these before,but most likely nailed into the leather soles of boots.
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Post by John on Jan 18, 2015 16:27:06 GMT -5
I'd go with Jim, steel toe caps for boots, probably to stop the old miner from wearing out the toe while kneeling and filling out coal. Never saw a pony with anything like that.
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ann
Trainee
Posts: 26
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Post by ann on Jan 18, 2015 16:41:03 GMT -5
Thanks for this - The person who suggested them for the ponies said that they were upside down in the photo and would have been nailed on along the bottom of the hoof - however having a horse myself I know that nails don't go in at that angle but I don't profess to know it all so am glad that others have expressed doubts too!
Anyone heard of the term "capills" before? |
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Post by John on Jan 18, 2015 18:34:55 GMT -5
Thanks for this - The person who suggested them for the ponies said that they were upside down in the photo and would have been nailed on along the bottom of the hoof - however having a horse myself I know that nails don't go in at that angle but I don't profess to know it all so am glad that others have expressed doubts too!
Anyone heard of the term "capills" before? |
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Post by dazbt on Jan 19, 2015 2:34:00 GMT -5
Toe caps for wooden clogs, at a guess. Can't see them being nailed into a leather sole boot, they wouldn't last two minutes. Think these might also have been fitted internal to the clog toe, those that I recall had similar but shorter toe caps on the outside.
But .................. just to add further confusion;
"CAPILL.
A type of packhorse.
The term CAPILL is also known in Gaelic, spelled “CAPULL”, derives from “CABULLUS” Latin for packhorse."
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Post by John on Jan 19, 2015 8:03:21 GMT -5
Toe caps for wooden clogs, at a guess. Can't see them being nailed into a leather sole boot, they wouldn't last two minutes. Think these might also have been fitted internal to the clog toe, those that I recall had similar but shorter toe caps on the outside. But .................. just to add further confusion; "CAPILL. A type of packhorse. The term CAPILL is also known in Gaelic, spelled “CAPULL”, derives from “CABULLUS” Latin for packhorse." |
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ann
Trainee
Posts: 26
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Post by ann on Feb 16, 2015 13:46:00 GMT -5
Thought I would just provide an update! Visited the National Coal Mining Museum at Caphouse today and took the capills along. They've been identified as toe pieces for clogs which of course have a thick wooden sole for them to be nailed onto on the outside. Definitely nothing to do with the ponies  |
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Post by dazbt on Feb 22, 2015 13:01:53 GMT -5
[/quote]Why on the inside Daz???
[/quote]
I first wore clogs when I was thirteen years old not as a miner I might add, but whilst working at a scrap yard (long story, I was still at school but got set on by telling the owner that I’d left school at the beginning of the summer holidays). I started work wearing just a pair of school shoes but an old retired collier who worked there part time gave me a spare pair of his clogs. Wooden soles, leather uppers, separate steel wearing strips not unlike thin horse shoes (clog irons) on the sole and heel with a small shaped steel wear protector (called a toe-tin) on the front edge which was shaped to cover the toe part of the leather upper but, only extending back by about half an inch, nothing like the “Cappill” photograph which at a guess would extend back over the toes by about two and a half inches. My original clogs were very much the same style and shape that I saw still being used underground in 1965, these were narrowed at the front almost like the chisel-toed shoe fashionable in the mid 1960s, certainly not bull nosed and rounded or same shape as the “Capills”, however ............... I did later see so called protective toe-capped clogs which were bull nosed and did have a steel toe cap but not external, these were covered by the leather uppers.
As a further note;
I personally hated wearing the standard issue NCB rubber sole pit boot with the external toe cap, acting like scoops when you were crawling through the face and compacting coal and muck between the caps and the upper causing discomfort, the internal toe caps were much more comfortable.
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